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February 24, 2016

DIY Quilting Design Wall

My design wall to date consisted of cotton batting taped to
the wall behind my sewing table. It
worked all right in a pinch, but inevitably I would return to it the following
morning and it would be laying in a heap on the floor – along with all my
nicely laid out blocks L I have spent countless hours re-taping and
re-laying out quilt tops and I finally had enough!

After scouring Pinterest for a DIY design wall for quilters, I
finally got around to putting one together last weekend!

Most DIYs seem to consist of 1” thick Styrofoam insulation
boards with either cotton batting or flannel wrapped around it. Some were hung on the wall,
even with a cut-out for an outlet, others were left free standing and one even went so far as to make it reversible!

Here’s what I did:

I picked up this queen flannel sheet set at Sears. It was
already on sale with an additional 30% off. Yay!!

Get your own flannel sheet set:

I then stopped at my local Reno Depot and picked up three 1
½” thick Styrofoam insulation boards.
These were the cheapest I could find at $7.59 a pop. Thankfully I had the hubs with me as driving
home with those puppies would have been impossible on my own – they completed
blinded you on one side. Definitely not
the safest. It is the first time I wished we had a pick-up truck ;)

While my sheets were washing and drying, I measured and cut
my Styrofoam boards down to 80” long as I wanted to be sure I could get them
through a doorway if I needed to change the location. Plus I wanted to be sure my sheet fit! If you do cut your boards down, I highly
recommend having a vacuum at the ready – there were little pieces of Styrofoam
EVERYWHERE!

I then taped them all together using Black Gorilla tape. You can certainly tackle this on your own,
but it went so much quicker with two people.

At that point, I was actually considering making a sleeve so
that my design wall would be reversible, but after what felt like an eternity
on my hands and knees trying to smooth out the fabric so I could cut it down to
my specified measurements, I gave up. Every time I got one end smooth, I looked
to the other end and it had bunched in the middle. So I abandoned that idea and just decided to
go with a one-sided design. Once I made
that decision, things came together really quickly.

I laid my top sheet with the right side facing down and laid
my taped together Styrofoam wall over top.
Starting in the centre of each side, I pulled the fabric taught and
taped into place. I continued this until
all sides were taped up. It doesn't have
to look pretty, it just needs to stay in place.

Then it was just a matter of flipping it over and resting it
against the wall! Easy peasy ;) Here she is in all her glory with my charity quilt blocks already laid out. If you would like to see how I pieced those blocks together you can check out my post here.

Thank you for such a genuine attitude and teaching your children such good morals. I grew up in a bilingual family and I knew what it's like not to be able to speak fluent English. He did a great job on the design wall. Once I get my renovation done I plan on making one